


This Is Not Some Kind of Meet-Cute

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Gifted (2017)
Genre: Cats, Developing Friendships, Found Family, Fred Is a Catalyst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Parent-Child Relationship, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 02:16:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13021134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: When Frank met Roberta. . . To tell the truth, it was all Fred’s doing.





	This Is Not Some Kind of Meet-Cute

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buhdderkupp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buhdderkupp/gifts).



There was a note his sister had written on the back of a large envelope, probably about the time she’d begun to consider killing herself. Messy and disjointed, like always, as if she were writing a proof with a mathematical language she didn’t yet know. Or maybe it was the story she wanted to tell that he hadn’t found time to listen to.

“It’s like that movie, that book: ONLY CONNECT.”

On the side, scrawled diagonally and also in all caps was  
FORSTER  
RIGHT!!

“Reconcile the prose, passion, beast, monk—those discrete qualities to bring together on the inside, the people you bring to you on the outside. That’s what matters, the connections, and the rest is bullshit. Can your philosophers say anything else matters as much?

You were even worse at it than me.”

~~~

“Shit! Shitshitshit.” Frank bolted after Fred as he raced out the back door and legged it across the yard, straight for Ms. Taylor’s place. Of all the days for him to escape, it had to be the one when she was out working in front of her place, trimming rosebushes or whatever it was. Goddamn cats.

And of course Mary had to get in on it, chasing after Fred with his leash and harness, shouting “Fred, Fred, Fred!” at the top of her little lungs. They really should never have gotten into the habit of taking him with them outside the house—cats weren’t supposed to go places with you.

“Slow down,” Frank warned her, but she was impelled forward by her own momentum and buzzed right up next to him and kept going, and now he had to snag her as well as Fred. And there was Ms. Taylor, watching the whole thing.

Most of the time, Fred was great about staying where the food and the affection were. Frank could admire his essential laziness: Fred was a cat who knew a good thing when he found it, and whatever had cost him his eye had probably gone a long way toward helping him reach that zen space. Outside of a ping-pong ball, he cared about nothing more than lying around, enjoying life with a doting little girl in their dump he treated like a palace, occasionally joining them on trips to the marina or the beach.

Ms. Taylor came toward them, something scarily claw-like in one hand and something sharp and stabby in the other, and it looked like she might be ready to throw down on him. She wiped some sweat from her forehead and stopped in front of Fred, one eyebrow flying up, as Fred wandered in circles around her, rubbing against her leg, tail up in greeting.

Frank picked Fred up, rougher than necessary, and set him in Mary’s open arms—he was almost as big as she was, even though she’d put on a growth spurt recently. “Take him home, okay? I’ll be there in a minute.”

Ms. Taylor smiled down at Mary, soft and friendly in a way she clearly wasn’t going to be to him. “Is that your kitty, angel?”

“His name is Fred!” Mary said with her usual enthusiasm whenever she talked about the cat. Frank closed his eyes and shook his head.

“You love him a lot, don’t you?”

“He’s _awesome_. He’s my _best friend_.”

Frank gave Ms. Taylor a guilty shrug. “Go on now,” he said, nodding toward their place.

The whirlpool of her emotions churned across her face: remembering this was a situation they were supposed to avoid at all costs, and she glanced anxiously from Frank to Ms. Taylor and back a couple times. Her eyes got huge—Frank hoped there wouldn’t be tears—before she settled on excitement and stared up at Ms. Taylor. “Sorry,” Mary said, and it embarrassed Frank, that she was apologizing for his shiftiness. Then she toddled off toward their place, half carrying, half dragging Fred. His leash trailed between her feet. She could trip and fall and Frank worked his jaw around, watching her and hoping Ms. Taylor wasn’t going to comment on his shit parenting skills.

“Sooo...yeah, about the cat.”

~~~

They’d found Fred in a boatyard he’d been working at, when Frank had gone to throw some packaging away. Mary’d heard him meowing, wounded and probably hurting a lot, hiding near some trash cans. It was hard to tell how long his eye had been infected, he was in such rough shape and far too skinny. They’d taken him to a vet, the cheapest one he could find—even that was too steep, since Frank wouldn’t be paid for a few weeks after the job was finished and he’d had to buy all those parts and tools up front. No, Frank had told Mary, the vet was as much as they could do for the cat, they couldn’t keep it once it’d healed up. Mary had been inconsolable: she lost her voice from crying and wailing so hard, so long. Red-faced and wild-eyed, snot smeared across her cheek, and Frank’s heart had broken for about the six-thousandth time since they’d lost her mother.

He’d tried to explain that it wasn’t a good idea and someone else would give him a better home: he didn’t like cats. “Why?” Mary’d asked, her little brows drawn in a v.

“Because I just don’t.” Though—how much of that was Evelyn talking? He’d rebelled against Evelyn’s precepts his whole life, but never questioned the cat thing.

“Why?” Nothing like having bullshit called on you by a toddler. Diane had always longed for a pet; she’d finally stopped begging after years of Evelyn’s indifference to anything that might qualify.

Frank could never match Mary’s stamina for questions. He’d looked at his bank account, his charge cards. “I suppose my position is due for a closer interrogation,” he’d said, and she didn’t really know what he meant but she was always astoundingly tuned in to his frequency. She’d thrown her arms around him and squealed.

There were a few tenants with little dogs he’d spotted when they’d looked at this house, so Frank assumed pets would be allowed. Nothing had been restricted in the ad. When she’d finished showing them the place, Ms. Taylor had mentioned off-handedly, “Oh, and no pets, I’m afraid.” Mary had been running around them in figure eights, she hadn’t heard the bad news.

He’d taken Mary to the car, glum and dragged down like he was swimming with weights on. For weeks they’d been looking for a permanent residence; by that point there wasn’t much he could afford, even here, and some of the ones he could swing, the managers would take one look at his niece and claim the place had just been rented a few hours before. By the time they’d found this house, they were both exhausted and discouraged, Mary more than Frank because she couldn’t understand what was happening. Her eyes were edged with anxiety: she soaked up his stress about money and shelter like a sponge and as the search wore on, squeezed it back out on him.

“The lady said that they’ve stopped allowing new renters to have pets,” he explained, although he wasn’t sure she could process it. He’d never talked down to Mary. “Those people we saw with the dogs were living here before new owners took over and the new ones say no more animals. If we want to live here”—and Frank could hear the tension in his voice, no matter how hard he tried to mask it—“we can’t have a cat. Ms. Taylor was very apologetic about not telling us before.” He hadn’t mentioned pet ownership one way or the other to Ms. Taylor.

“What’s apopbegec?” Mary had asked, the little parentheses between her eyebrows deepening. He put his finger to them and rubbed. Christ, he was _such_ a fuckup of a parent. If he’d saved just a little more money or hadn’t imposed on Aaron’s family so long already it would have given him time to keep looking.

“Apologetic. It means saying that you’re sorry.”

That question answered, she came up against the central dilemma: “Then we can’t have Freeeed,” she’d howled and burst into tears, hiccupy sobs wracking her body. In between great gulps of air she wailed Fred’s name as he pulled her into his arms, her soft curls tickling his nose and catching on his beard, her tears warmly dampening his shoulder.

So yeah, he’d lied.

~~~

Ms. Taylor watched Mary and Fred round the corner, shot him A Look. “Mm-hmm.” That was all she gave him, just waiting. It was a technique he knew well—don’t say anything yourself, let the other person fill the silence. Incriminate themselves. This woman was apparently the Jedi master.

“I know we said we didn’t have a pet and wouldn’t be getting one when I signed the forms. It’s just that—”

“Frank,” she said in a voice that dripped with scorn. He hadn’t heard his name said that way since he’d last spoken to Evelyn. “I’m gonna stop you right there. On a grown man, that sort of disingenuousness isn’t appealing. This is not some kind of—meet-cute, you know. There’s no scenario where I find out you been lying but you’re such a charming rascal I can’t help but forgive you and we become besties, even though you got this”—and she waved a hand up and down in front of him—“going on. So what else you been lying about?”

That wasn’t the response he’d expected; Frank blinked.

“Oh, you think the black lady who manages the dump of a complex in Backwater, Florida, doesn’t know words like _disingenuous_.”

Frank shook his head and stroked his fingers over his beard. “To be honest, it was _meet-cute_ that caught me off-guard.”

That got a smile out of her, however begrudging. “Mm-hmm.” So they were back to that.

“Is there anything I can say that won’t mean either getting evicted or giving up the cat? Because I don’t think I can do that to Mary. She’s...she’s lost a lot for such a little kid. I don’t want her to lose Fred, too.”

Apparently putting the focus on Mary’s future potential emotional trauma was the ticket to softening her up. Her eyes flicked toward the house; she exhaled some of the tension out of her body and tossed her garden tools toward her stoop.

He was in the shit now, might as well go all the way down. “Mary’s not my daughter, she’s my niece.”

The usual signs of fear flitted across her face: Amber alerts, kidnapping charges, child endangerment. How fast could she call the police.

“But I _am_ her legal guardian. I promise you that. Ms. Taylor, I’m not some—”

She cut him off with a wave of her hand, not even looking at him, distantly calculating damages. “Roberta,” she offered automatically, without thinking, before her eyes snapped back to his.

With a sigh, Frank said, “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not like that.” At this point he probably couldn’t fix this; the best he could hope for was a stay of execution. He ran his hand through his hair. “Look, Roberta, would you like to come over and maybe have an iced tea, or a beer, or...” He held his hands out. “I owe you the story, at the very least.”

Her eyes cut across toward his place. She seemed suddenly tired, as if frustrated with herself for not seeing through this child-napping charlatan. “Sure.”

When they came in the door Mary’s eyes went big, and Frank gave her a little nod of reassurance. He’d told her Fred was a special secret they had to keep to themselves, and it wasn’t like they’d had a lot of company, certainly not the person he’d told her to hide from. No one had visited here since Aaron’s family helped them move in.

The smarter Mary got, the more often Frank found himself in the philosophical quagmire of explaining why, in these particular instances, lying was acceptable. Cowardice had seemed the better part of valor: she didn’t have to know that they were hiding Fred because her uncle was an emotional basketcase incapable of withstanding the hurricane of a five-year-old’s emotions. Evelyn had been right in her assessment of him: he was mostly a huge disappointment.

“Mary, you remember Ms—Roberta.” Of course it was a little late for proper introductions, but he’d rarely spoken to, or about, Roberta once she’d given him the keys.

“Hi,” Mary said. The adults stood there and watched her little face journey as it moved from suspicion to anxiety to intrigue in the span of a moment. She was picking up his stress frequency but waiting for him to tell her what to do.

The sofa was covered in his work crap, and he caught Roberta’s disdain at all the disorder when she took in the living room. Frank stuck the closest DVD to hand in the player and parked Mary in front of the TV, motioned Roberta toward the kitchen. “What can I get you?”

“Unless something stronger’s on offer, I think I’ll take that beer.” She had a somewhat confused look on her face, or maybe it was just that she couldn’t figure out exactly what his deal was. Frank figured he should save the something stronger for once she’d heard the story.

“Listen, I just—I’m not some pervy uncle or a creeper who spirits kids across state lines for immoral purposes. You can look all this up in records, I’ll give you all the information you need.” Very quietly, even though he knew Mary wouldn’t hear him over the movie and she knew about Diane anyway, Frank added, “Mary’s mother, my sister...she died. Suicide. When Mary was just a baby.”

“I’m so sorry.” Her reaction was quick and genuine in a way many people’s responses weren’t; for most the words were rote, a requirement. He’d been too young to realize when his father died something he found out after Diane: you were given only about two weeks to get over a loss in this culture, even a suicide. The rest of the world wanted you to suck it the hell up, shut up. “Was there any other family?” Roberta asked, and the catch in her voice told him she’d lost someone of her own.

~~~

“Would it have gone better for you if dad had lived longer? Maybe there’d have been someone to stand between ~~Mother~~ ~~Evelyn~~ her and me

besides you. You were just a kid.”

In between the lines, she’d drawn a bunch of crying face emojis.

~~~

Any time someone asked him about family he rattled off a prepared explanation that cost him no emotional currency. That wouldn’t wash with Roberta. “My mother and stepfather chose to not be part of our lives any longer, my father died when I was young. There’s extended family but we never really saw them much because a lot of them are in England. Mary’s father was _definitely_ out of the picture. So now...I’m her family and legal guardian. Chief cook and bottle washer.”

“Sounds lonely.” Roberta studied him. “So, what did you do before all that?”

It was startling, how touched he was by her unsentimental responses. Frank didn’t know what to make of that. “At the time, I taught at Boston University. Assistant professor. Philosophy.”

Scoffing, Roberta said, “Oh, that’s useful,” and took a drink.

Frank drank his own beer and tried not to laugh. Because honestly, now that he’d been away for a few years, he couldn’t say she was wrong. “I liked—I was drawn to the sort of conflict between the metaphysical and the precision of it. The quiet of it.” Her eyes said _whatever you say_. “You do anything besides manage...” he motioned out the window.

“Not anymore.” Roberta leaned back against the counter, ignoring the mess there, and considered something. “I used to work over at FGCU, from the beginning, actually. English academic advisor. I loved it, loved the kids I worked with and _most_ of the faculty, thought about maybe becoming a writer myself and took advantage of the tuition break to take courses.”

There was always a “but” in these sorts of stories. “What happened?” He’d considered looking for a position there, a couple times, with Aaron’s encouragement. But he could never really work up the enthusiasm.

Roberta shrugged. “Bit of nonsense. Bad boss came in—which wasn’t too awful, since I didn’t have to deal with him much outside meetings—and my mother got sick. Never seemed to be enough money for advisor salary increases, and between taking care of Mama and not enough money and the manager here leaving, felt like a good idea to quit and take up a career in property management.”

Frank huffed a laugh. “I hear that.” He drank some more of his beer. “I guess I honestly thought I could swing it. Could be a working parent.” So many times he’d considered finding an adoptive family for Mary, but if he did that, he’d be losing Diane all over again. “I tried for the better part of a year to teach and get help with raising her. Only seemed to have terrible consequences for both of us.”

“She’s about five?” At his nod, Roberta added, “And she doesn’t go to kindergarten? You home school her, right? Never seen you send her off.” Did she think he was also some kind of religious wackjob?

“It didn’t take long to see that Mary was a lot like her mother—Diane was a math genius.” That was a word Frank tried to avoid, but it was unfortunately the simplest one to get the point across. “I could see it even before Mary became verbal—everything I read about child development, it was clear she was way ahead of her age group in everything. She would follow in her mother’s footsteps, maybe even exceed them.” Diane had wondered about that. Feared it, too, a little.

“She’s a special, sweet child, whether or not she’s a genius.” It was kind of Roberta not to ask if Diane had cared for her child or to offer the judgment Frank was used to hearing: no one who loved their child could commit suicide and leave them alone like that. It was so astounding, the things people said.

“You have kids of your own?” Frank asked.

Her eyes got that distant cast again as she sneaked a glance at Mary through the kitchen doorway. “No. Just love all over my sister’s babies when I can.”

They stared at each other for a bit, silently drinking their beers. “So,” Roberta said, “what’s the true story? How the hell did you _really_ end up down here, home schooling your niece and doing...whatever it is you’re doing? Something with boats?”

“Repair, yeah. That is an even longer story.”

“I appear to have time.” Frank supposed he should have expected that. Telling her more might not make him seem any less shady, but it could keep her from evicting them right away, give him enough time to find another place.

~~~

Diane said _banilla_ for _vanilla_ as a kid; it was their mother’s favorite flavor. Being a couple years older, Frank had felt obligated to call her a doofus and correct her, using the same tone as Evelyn would.

Her note to him was written on a manila envelope that he’d found while clearing out her and the baby’s things—after Evelyn kicked her out for getting pregnant, Diane had moved in with someone she knew from the university. Not a good friend, she didn’t really have any of those—just another PhD from her program. Diane had made it clear that only Frank was allowed to go through her stuff. _She left me a banilla envelope_ , he’d thought, a semi-hysterical laugh sticking in his throat. His reaction was simply the stress of trying to organize the estate for probate, planning her funeral, and trying to keep his job while caring for an infant, he’d told himself, as the housemate left the room and quietly shut the door.

One day, after they’d settled a little in St. Petersburg, Frank and Mary went out for ice cream with his friend Aaron and Aaron’s fiancée. What flavors did Mary want in her sundae, Frank had asked. “Chokli’ and banilla!” She’d jumped up and down. “Plus, um, sprinkles!” Frank had stumbled away to find the restroom so he could compose himself.

Apparently he’d done a shit job of it, because when he came back out and joined them at their table, Mary had stuck her arms out, demanding to be picked up. She’d curled them around his neck, crying softly. He knew then that they were stuck together, like a couple of wounded soldiers trying to make their way back to the command post.

~~~

“I resigned my position at the university when I realized I was in over my head,” Frank explained, surprising himself at how easily he’d accepted her challenge. “Bounced down the coast for a while, staying with friends or in extended stay hotels. Lived off my savings. I had no damn clue what to do. A friend in Falls Church, Virginia, had some space we used till his family returned from a trip. That’s where I started to realize she was—I hate the word _gifted_ , but it’s the only one that fits.” Frank didn’t want to tell her that it wasn’t only Mary’s giftedness which scared him: she was turning into a dead ringer for Diane at that age, in looks and in the personality that blossomed larger and larger each day. He found himself constantly pierced by an exquisite, acute ache: every day he woke up to those huge little-girl-Diane eyes and that voice, and it ripped him to shreds.

“I guess I just wanted to get as far away from my old life as possible. Like maybe distance would bring me an epiphany about what the best thing to do would be. Considered looking for a teaching position at Tulane, so we swung down this way to stay with a grad school friend and his dad before we headed west. To keep myself from going stir crazy, I started helping his dad work on boats, found out I was pretty good at it. Before we got here my car had died, and by then I’d run out of savings, so unless I wanted to go back to Boston with my tail between my legs, I had to find some work. So boats it was.”

“The metaphysical and the precision. The quiet of it.” With a sigh, Roberta set her empty bottle in the sink. “You sure you don’t have something stronger?”

Frank cocked his head. “Scotch?”

“Hell yes,” Roberta said with a grin, and he realized: _she’s not going to dump us on the streets. She might even be friendly._

As he reached up into the top cabinet, Roberta went into the living room and he heard her say, “Mary, honey, why don’t you pause your show and come here for a minute?” After pouring a couple fingers of Scotch for them both, Frank brought their glasses out. Mary had wasted no time and was already sitting next to Roberta with her picture scrapbook of Fred in her lap, bubbling over with excitement at the prospect of preaching the gospel of Fred, with pictures. _Shit. I do not socialize her enough._ Didn’t matter where they were—Starbucks or Macy’s or the doctor’s office—Mary would beeline for anyone who seemed like a remote prospect to spread the Fred Word to.

“You love that little kitty, don’t you?” Roberta petted her hair, smiling down at her with genuine fondness.

“We found him in a trash can. He was really sick.” She flipped to a picture and pointed. “See his eye?” That was such a disgusting picture, he couldn’t believe she would show that to someone. “But he’s better now. He’s funny and cool and he has a ping-pong ball that he loves. And, um, we can take him on rides and stuff, and he even goes on the boats!” She showed Roberta a photo of Fred on a pier. “Frank hates cats, but he likes Fred.” As if she suddenly realized she’d gone off-mission, Mary stared at Roberta, mouth open. “But, um, I know we’re not supposed to have him.”

“Well, now. What kind of person doesn’t want cats around.” Roberta threw him a scornful glance. “That’s nonsense.” Which seemed to delight Mary and she laughed and clapped her hands together.

The waterworks would start, though, if he let her get going on whether or not they could keep Fred. “In my defense, my mother was allergic, so I kinda grew up believing cats were the spawn of Satan,” Frank explained. “I’ve since altered my position, at least as far as one-eyed felines.”

Roberta looked at him as though she thought he was a complete idiot, and asked, “So you’re not thinking about teaching again? Most of the folks I worked with didn’t give up that life so easy.” She turned her attention back to Mary’s book.

“No, they don’t. But you know...” and she kept looking at pictures, waiting for him to finish. That wasn’t something he was ready to talk about, so he said instead, “It takes a while to establish yourself running your own business. This way there’s a certain amount of freedom to be with Mary all day, work with her.”

“Frank is freelance,” Mary said with solemnity.

With a small laugh, Roberta commented, “Hard life for some, though—single parenting. You can’t always take a child with you everywhere. And there’s...just trying to live life.”

“True.” But there wasn’t a lot of free time to dwell on it these days, all that life he was missing out on. It was always simpler not to think about what he missed.

Roberta leaned over and kissed Mary on the top of the head. “Don’t worry, angel. Don’t you worry about Fred.” Mary jumped to her feet on the couch and hugged Roberta: he shouldn’t have felt so much pleasure at seeing how speedily Roberta’d been taken down by the power of Mary Adler, too, but with weaker resolve, they had a better chance of staying put.

Getting up, Roberta patted Mary on the shoulder and went out the back door; Frank walked out with her. Fred watched them go with his usual bored indifference, as if he hadn’t been the one to start this whole thing in the first place. “I’ll figure something out,” Roberta told Frank, giving Fred a baleful look.

~~~

“We never learned—to only connect— & with other people we could” and the rest of Diane’s thought had been savagely scratched over, then blacked out further with a marker. Even rubbing a pencil over the rest of the sentence couldn’t show him what she’d written.

She’d always told him he was a dick, shaking her head over how he never dated anyone for longer than a few months, how superficial his bro friendships were, when she longed to have any true friends at all. The intimacy that came with real love.

“connect the prose & passion & beast & monk. Since I can’t seem to maybe you have to find someone and connect

what if you end up just like me”

~~~

The thing he missed most about Boston was the change of seasons. Watching trees lose their leaves, the first pristine snow, plants poking out of cold wet earth. The Celtics he could catch on TV. But he was constantly startled by how easily the missing dwindled as Mary got older, as they built a life.

Frank had been horrified to read they had sinkholes in Florida—karst, apparently, was what it was called—among the ten thousand other terrible things; they opened at random under houses and businesses and roadways. They were on his mind all the time, and he thought they should go someplace else where there were lots of boats and a good university or two. Seattle was a serious contender with all its tech money and water-lovers, and where earthquakes were the only real danger you’d face instead of sinkholes and hurricanes and Republicans. There wasn’t anything tying them here, after all, once he’d saved enough money.

Roberta was watching him with that knowing gaze. “How long’s it been since you had any time to yourself?”

Dropping his head, he huffed. “Probably not since the last friend I took advantage of for child care.”

“Not very good friends if helping out when you’re down on your luck is taking advantage.”

That was a fair observation. Leaving Mary with his friends was one thing, but strangers were another. “Good babysitters can be tough to find when you’re income challenged, so. A while.”

She felt sorry for him. “Gone on a date?” He shook his head. Roberta had an amazing face: changes swept across it like weather. You’d never not know where you stood with her. “I don’t make this kind of offer to tenants, especially not one who’s lied to me. But you want to leave her with me for a few hours Friday night, go out for a while? Find yourself some grownup friends.”

He laughed. “Can’t really afford it right now.”

“Did I say you had to pay me? I don’t recall that.” She shook her head, eyes wide. “What kind of fool— _pay me._ It’s called a _friendly offer_. She’s a sweet little baby, I’d be happy to have her.”

Something that had been sharp and tight seemed to loosen inside him, and he waved a hand vaguely, not quite able to bring up the words. It had been so long since he’d made a connection with someone that it was like being cracked open, having all that festering loneliness and anxiety scooped out.

“Thank you, Roberta. We’d like that a lot.” With a half smile, he held his finger and thumb up. “I don’t know. I think if you take out the rom-com aspect, this meeting could qualify. You sure it isn’t just a liiitle cute?”

“Uh-uh.” Roberta wagged her finger at him—she wasn’t going to let him make her smile, which made him all the more determined to do so.

Frank cocked an eyebrow. “Beginning of a beautiful friendship?”

Roberta scoffed, twirled her keys around on her finger, and walked away. “We’ll see about that.”


End file.
